They had talked a lot about sad a few days before, after Jane had thrown a box of stuff at the wall for reasons she couldn’t explain. She’d yelled at Owl a lot, and said she wanted to go back to the factory, which she didn’t really at all, so she didn’t know why she’d said it. Then she’d cried again, which she was real tired of doing. She’d done a lot of bad behaviour that day, but Owl hadn’t been angry. Instead, she’d told Jane to come sit next to the wall screen by her bed, close as she could to Owl’s face, and Owl made some music until Jane stopped crying. Owl said it was okay to be sad about 64, and about the bad things that had happened at the factory. She said that was a kind of sad that would never go away, but it would get easier. It hadn’t gotten easier yet. Jane wished it would hurry up.
She scooped up the mushroom bits into her hands and walked over to the stove. A stove was a hot thing you made food on. Owl could give it power now, ever since Jane had started cleaning off the outside of the ship – the hull. Now more of the coating on the hull could make power out of sunlight. Once Jane finished that task, Owl wouldn’t have to choose which things worked and which things didn’t. She could make a lot more things work now than she had at first. She could make the ship very warm and turn on all the lights inside, and the stove and the stasie worked. The shower worked now, too, because Jane had filled up the water tanks. That had taken six days of dragging the water wagon back and forth, back and forth. It had been stupid and bad, and there had been dogs a couple times (the weapon was such a good thing). But there was clean water now, and she didn’t itch any more, and the bathroom wasn’t gross. That all was good. But between that and the two days she’d spent cleaning scrap off of the ship, her arms and legs were real real tired. She wasn’t bleeding or broken or anything, but she hurt.
She put a pan on the stove, dropped the mushrooms into it, and turned the stove on real low. She had to be careful doing that. Mushrooms weren’t very good to eat without being cooked, but if she cooked them too hot, they’d stick to the pan and they wouldn’t be any good at all. She’d made that mistake the first time, and wasted a whole bunch of them. With as much work as it took to bring mushrooms home and get them ready, she didn’t want to waste any ever again.
Jane had a thought she hadn’t before. ‘Did you have a crew before the . . . the two men?’
Owl had said she wasn’t sad any more, but she was now. Her face said so. ‘Yes. The shuttle was owned by a couple on Mars. They used the ship for vacations. Outer Sol system, mostly. The occasional tunnel hop. I was with them for ten years.’
The mushrooms started to make hissing sounds. Jane tried to keep an eye on them, but she was worried about Owl. She’d never heard her sound so wrong. ‘Did they get arrested, too?’
‘Oh, no. No, they sold the ship. They had two children, Mariko and Max. I watched them grow up in here. But after they became adults, the vacations stopped, and I guess . . . I guess their parents didn’t need a shuttle any more.’
Jane frowned, watching the mushrooms wiggle against the pan. ‘Did you want to stay with them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did they know that?’
‘I don’t know. If they did, it wouldn’t have mattered. That’s not how the galaxy works.’
‘Why?’
‘Because AIs aren’t people, Jane. You can’t forget that about me. I’m not like you.’
Jane didn’t understand why Owl being not like her would make her feelings not important, but the mushrooms were starting to get crispy around the edges, so she paid attention to that instead. It was easier than finding words.
There was a sound – a tapping kind of sound. Jane turned her ear toward the ceiling. ‘Owl, what is that?’ She turned off the stove. The mushrooms hissed quieter; the tapping got louder. Like a bunch of little bolts falling onto the hull.
‘It’s nothing bad. Go up to the control room and I’ll show you.’
Jane hurried out of the kitchen and did as told. Owl turned the viewscreen on and . . . and . . . Jane did not understand. It was morning, but the sky was kind of dark. And there was . . . there was . . .
‘Owl,’ Jane said slowly. ‘Why is there water falling out of the sky?’
‘That’s called rain,’ Owl said. ‘Don’t worry, it’s supposed to happen.’
The tapping got louder, louder. Everything outside was wet. She saw a few lizard-birds (that was what Owl called the flying animals; she didn’t know the right word for them). They flew down low, ducking into a scrap pile, shaking off their wings and tails to get the sky water off them.
Nothing outside the factory made any sense. Not any sense.
‘Jane, it’d be a good idea for you to push the water wagon outside,’ Owl said. ‘With the drums open. They’ll catch the rain that way.’
‘Is it good water?’ Jane wasn’t sure about this rain thing. This was maybe the weirdest thing yet, and she’d seen a lot of weird things already.
‘It’s better than the water you brought back, for sure. It’s probably not drinkable as it is, but it’ll be easier to clean.’
‘But the tanks are already full.’ Pushing the water wagon outside meant going outside. Into the rain.
‘They won’t always be. This way, when you need to top them up, you don’t have to go all the way back to the waterhole. You’ll have a bit right here already.’
Jane took a deep breath. ‘Okay.’ The rain was weird and she didn’t want to go into it, but her hurting legs and tired back made her think Owl’s idea was better than one more trip to the waterhole. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘What am I supposed to do now?’